For the people in government, rather than the people who pester it, Washington is an early-rising, hard-working city. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.
P.J. O’Rourke, “The Winners Go to Washington, D.C.”, Parliament of Whores, 1991
July 24, 2009
QotD: Government waste
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There are spinoffs, and then there are spinoffs
The space program has lots of detractors (and, to be fair, lots of starry-eyed, er, boosters), but here are some spinoffs from the space program that may not be obvious:
Or: more accurately, in strictly economic terms — what has the space program done for us?
Well, for starters: without the space program we’d probably be dead. Spy satellites are the very keystone of arms verification; without spysats the cold war would quite possibly have turned hot by the early 1960s, due to misinformation and fear permeating the chain of command on either side. Subsequently, gamma-ray detector satellites such as the American Vela constellation and its Soviet equivalents gave some reassurance to the superpowers by giving them the ability to know with a degree of confidence in whether or not nuclear explosions were taking place anywhere on the planet — a prerequisite for nuclear deterrence without a launch-on-warning policy.
But the cold war’s over. So what else?
* Weather satellites. We tend to forget how primitive weather forecasting was before we could look down on developing weather systems from above; the evidence is on your TV set every day.
* Communications. The first live trans-Atlantic TV transmission took place as recently as July 23rd, 1963; go back even a few years before that, and intercontinental TV was an element of science fiction. Today, you can buy a premium-priced mobile phone that gives you coverage from the middle of the ocean, by way of satellite services such as Inmarsat and Iridium, and see news from the far side of the world in real time. It has quite literally shrunk the world.
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Is this the original “Eye of Horus”?
Full story here.
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Photo tour of the USS Hornet
I’ve been onboard several retired battleships, but so far I’ve not managed to get onto an aircraft carrier. This will have to do for the time being:
The USS Hornet was on hand 40 years ago to pick up the Apollo 11 astronauts after their Columbia Command Module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969.
Today, the aircraft carrier is preserved as a museum in Alameda, California. Its main deck is littered with historic warplanes and space artifacts including an Apollo command module and Mobile Quarantine Facility from subsequent missions, pictured below. The first footsteps the Apollo 11 crew took on Earth after walking on the moon are traced on the deck.
USS Hornet CIC
Above: The USS Hornet’s Crisis Information Center is pictured. While engaged in active warfare, crewmembers would stand behind transparent, hanging boards and write information backwards to keep from getting in the way of the officers who needed to read it.
I think it was actually the “Combat” Information Center, but I could be mistaken. Lots of cool images, but I’d like to see more . . .
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More on scapegoating plastic bags
Back on the old site, I posted an item that related tangentially to the issue of plastic bags in supermarkets. Russ LeBlanc sent me a note, which I published as an update to that post. He’s now expanded on that idea, with a letter to newsdurhamregion.com:
You’d think in these tough economic times our public officials would avoid “trash talk.” Enough already!
Get to the real issues. Dwelling on emotional fallacies such as the dreaded plastic bag while people are left with little economic hope is unforgivable. Sorry, Camille, banning plastic bags will do less than little to save the planet. It isn’t even a start, but it does sound warm and fuzzy.
If our politicians feel it necessary to spend our hard-earned tax dollars on recycling studies then they should do due diligence and commission a study by independent biologists to find out if the other study is even worth it. Better yet, spend the money where it counts, attracting jobs.
See-through bags and supporting a big-business cash grab for something that represents less than one per cent of a landfill (plastic bags) is irresponsible. Heaven forbid we see a politician questioning this issue.
By the way, Madam Mayor, I’m sure the big retailers would welcome the reward card incentive program (even though it’s really a form of big business getting around the right to privacy issue). Perhaps we can use the points for a garborator?
Think at least twice before emulating these folks
It’s a joke I’ve told many times, and based on current trends, I’ll be telling it for many more years: we should have invested all our retirement savings in tattoo removal research:
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong: This is not the first tattoo on the “worst” list just because it’s an Apple tattoo. In fact, PC fangirl though I am, I’d much rather be walking around with an Apple image tattooed on my body than I would a Microsoft logo (like the infamous Zune guy). A little black apple might even be cute, and iconic enough that people would know exactly what my tattoo meant…which brings us to this lovely creation. Can we say overkill? The apple, well, fine. Even the power symbol in the middle, while a bit much, is acceptable. But “Think different” underneath? And to top it off, the fuzzy blue glow around that? This person could definitely take a leaf out of Apple’s advertising book: Understatement is key.
Whole story here.
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Is justice served?
Clive sent me this link with the comment “So often we see [stories] about justice perverted. Ridiculous sentences, punishment as an example to others. This one seemed just. Fun too.” This is the end of the Barrel Monster story:
A North Carolina State University student who created a “monster” out of construction barrels and placed it on the side of a road was sentenced Tuesday to 50 hours of community service.
District Judge Vince Rozier deferred judgment against Joseph Carnevale until Oct. 30. If Carnevale complies with the sentence, the charges against him will be dismissed.
Raleigh police charged the 21-year-old history major and part-time construction worker last month with misdemeanor larceny and destruction of property after he took the orange-and-white traffic barrels from a construction site near N.C. State.
Okay, at least Judge Buzzkill didn’t send Carnevale to jail, but what did the “victims” think of the crime?
Even Hamlin Associates, the construction company from which Carnevale took the barrels, has become a fan and has asked him to create a replica of the figure that led to his arrest on June 10.
“It’s been positive publicity for us,” Hamlin President Steve Hussey told The Associated Press in June. “If we’d known he’d do that good of work, we’d have given him the barrels.”
Authorities pursued the case, despite the construction company’s desire not to press charges.
So the awesome majesty of the state is deployed against a renegade artist, whose “victim” says it’s actually been a good thing for his company and who didn’t want to press charges.
“The law is a ass — a idiot.”
